Welcome to "Dust, Tears & Dice", a blog dedicated to the hobby of miniature wargaming.
If you fancy gaming periods off the beaten track then this is the place for you.
I am a regular member of The Wyvern Wargamers, formerly The Evesham Wargames Club drawing gamers from Worcester, Redditch, Kidderminster, Cheltenham and Stratford.
All players welcome.

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

It's amazing what you find for the wargames table when out and about, my local pet shop was having a clear out and I picked up the following for £6.00 it requires little if any touching up and can be used for my Far East Project or any Pulp type encounter.

The door way appears to be perfect for 28mm as these West Wind Japanese demonstrate and unlike most fish tank extras does not come with the back missing or space for a pump. I just need to think of a scenario that uses this as an objective.......

Sunday, January 20, 2013

Well if you can't go out due to the snow you might as well stay in and paint.

Yet more Imperial Chinese for the Boxer Rebellion, a mix here of General Nieh Shih-ch'eng's Tenacious Army and Manchu forces, these will be useful for putting down the Boxer rebels or to halt Seymour's advance.

3 Units re-based and re-painted with Big men in command and shock stands.

Kansu Braves ready for action.

Members of the Western Army organised along German lines and equipped with Mauser Rifles.

Friday, January 18, 2013

Having played several games of Pike Shot & Zombies over recent weeks albeit with an Elizabethan flavour, the urge for bigger games has started to take over, having spent a number of nights working away without PC or paints, it gave me the perfect opportunity to attempt some in house rules merging GW's Lord of the Rings Rules with Pike Shot & Zombies.

PS&Z has some great mechanisms I love the idea of umpire driven arrival points and their random movement is a great way for the umpire to keep control, rather that the more random movement rules with All Things Zombie which has been a favourite of our club for quite a while. However trying to move PS&Z beyond 10 figures aside bogged the game down a little.

So here goes a first draft of Zombie rules for LOTR, For the most part, the rules are exactly the same as The Strategy Battle Game - The Lord of the Rings.

The stats for your basic undead figure is as follows.

F

S

D

A

W

C

M

W

FT

Zombie

2/-

2

3

1

1

-

0

0

0

Zombies move 4" and are worth 4 Points Value.
They have no Courage rating and will always fight to the death.

Special Rules

Terror

The Living Dead have no fear and rely upon tearing and biting attacks on the living, Any human wishing to charge a Zombie must test their courage or will stand in place racked by fear.

The Shambling DeadThe Living Dead aren't the most agile, so any model must roll two dice for Jump and Climb tests, selecting the
lowest score as a result.

Devour

Should a Zombie defeat and kill a living character they and any victorious zombies will spend 1-3 Turns feeding on the body. Any Zombie with 12" will move to join the feast of flesh.

Dead Sight

The undead will pursue any living character with 12" within their Line of Sight, once line of sight is lost the undead will follow the most recent and loudest sound generated by the group or living characters.

Any zombie characters without an active target will move on the random movement of a dice, for each group of undead roll 1D6 this number represents the move distance and number of zombies that my move from the group this turn.

Plague Pits & Burials Mounds.

The starting points for your undead forces. These will be hidden from the players at the start of every game and will be come active once a player comes within "X" inches of the plague pit.

Plague Pits will generate 1D6 Zombie each turn, until the Zombie player reaches his point allocation or you run out of models....

Burial Mounds can be suppressed/closed by inflicting 3 wounds on the terrain item, the stats are as follows.

F

S

D

A

W

C

M

W

FT

Plague Pit

5/-

-

8

-

3

-

0

0

0

They are worth 120 Points Value.

Each turn a player conducts one of the actions below roll the following dice if the distance reaches the location of the plague pit the pit will be activated and will being spitting out its evil content the following turn.

Saturday, January 12, 2013

Saturday Night saw the continuation the occasional campaign games set in
England during the Black Death, when the Dead rose from their Plague Pits and terrorised the land.

In previous events we have seen the Oakley Militia attempt to quell the village of Littleham. (Episode one).

Several
miles away is the small town of Begley, surrounded by dense woods on one
side and a fast flowing river on the other, they had been largely
protected from the nightmare spreading across the land. However news
reach them by a local Parson that an infestation had broken at at
Gatford on the road to Begley and the walkers are edging ever closer to
Begley.

Daniel Fanshaw the local land owner leads the Begley trained bands under Captain Henry Milton on an expedition to Gatford.

The Village of Gatford with the undead already in evidence as the Begley trained bands approach. A heavy wagon can be seen outside the stable this was to play a key role in the strategy of the living.

Daniel (played by Dave an occasional wargamer, I say occasional we last played 20 years ago when we were at sixth form... sorry mate.. I siad I would not mention it..) had a straight forward plan, use one unit to create a distraction whilst the second crossed the river and blocks the bridge preventing further incursions.

The Begley Militia enter the table drums beating and flags unfurled, straight away attracting the attention of several walking corpses. The Militiamen prime their weapons and take aim.
The walkers prove difficult to put down taking several musket balls before they are dispatched.

The noise from the constant discharge of Calivers and Muskets causes more of the dead to rise from their burial mounds, the current of the river holds them at bay for now.

The second militia unit skirts the town house and heads for the bridge, the clink of helmet and brest plate disturbs a 3rd plague pit, this should but pressure on the living.

Danial Fanshaw draws his sword and after passing his courage test charges into the encroaching undead (we were using an adaptation of the LOTR rules, so his 3 attacks and high strength score made him very effective). His efforts shields his raiding party as they rush over the bridge.

Meanwhile on the left flank the sheer mass of undead allows them to clamber over each other as they fall into the water edging ever closer to the defenders, their poor marksmanship only serves to attract more of the foul creatures.

On the opposite bank the militia see the wagon parked outside the stable and rush towards it, knowing that if they can position it on the bridge they can stem the evil plague when the river rises in the coming weeks with the on set of winter and the anticipated rise in river levels.

Their rapid movement awakens a final burial mound which spills forth it's foul contents. Once again our hero throws himself into the fray.

The militia steady themselves for the advancing dead, one of the militia falls to retreat far enough and is pinned by one of the walkers, he is soon swamped and his colleagues are forced to stand and watch unable to assist him, they prime their weapons hoping to avenge him once the dead have finished lunch.

On the river bank the shotte continue to distract the main concentration of zombies, despite dispatching several they edge ever closer to the far bank.

Having secured their goal the militia drag the heavy wagon back towards the bridge, Daniel fights on carving his way through wave after wave of undead, but they just keep on coming.

View of the whole encounter with fighting taking place across the table.

The Militia fall back from the river bank choosing to enter hand to hand to dispatch the first zombies to cross in the hope that the others will be drawn to the firing at the bridge as they themselves had ceased firing.

Sensing their numbers weakening the militia close with the advancing zombies hoping to clear the western river bank.before others arrive.

Well they had several of their number run out of ball due to a few rounds of poor dice rolls.

Disaster strikes the Begley militia, two of their number are struck down before the last of the zombies are dispatched. The lack of breast plates or helmets meant no saving throw.

With the western side of the river clear of the walking dead and the heavy wagon blocking the bridge, the militia pour fire into the zombies pinned in the river trapped between the musket fire and the current, a small victory in the on going war against the undead.

Nice to get a game in over the weekend for a change and a chance to blood new units, with maybe a player back from a 20 year hiatus......

Catching up on the various blog's this morning, I found a great article by Brian over at The Warband

which detailed how he painted his Russian's, perfect timing as I kick off the next major project.

Perhaps of more interest within the article to the general gamer was an interesting app. that I had not come across before. Power Palette

Reaper Miniatures within their website they have an application called the Power Palette
that you can scan an image into and it will match it to the closest Master Series Ccolours from their paint range.

Using
Brian's example I also scanned images from my Osprey collection and it
produced a suggested a range of colours, I even tried scanning in
photo's of a couple of miniatures where I used Reaper Master paints and with the
right lighting it found it's own paint colours even with a varnish coating.

I suspect this will be old news to some but I am seriously impressed, thanks Brian for a great find.